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My hard drive is on it's way out. It shows up in device manager but nowhere else. I ran a Maxtor diagnostic check on it and it did say the drive is failing. Are there any programs that I could use to try to save the files on the drive?

Are there corrupt files now or do you want to back up the files before they get corrupt (from the failing drive). If nothing is bad so far, just install your new (or a good) hard drive and copy the files over to it.

Are there corrupt files now or do you want to back up the files before they get corrupt (from the failing drive). If nothing is bad so far, just install your new (or a good) hard drive and copy the files over to it.

I can't access the hard drive, it shows up in device manager as working properly but I have no way to see whats on it. when I ran the diagnostic check on the drive it said it was failing. So i have no way of dragging the files over because I don't even see the drive

Without paying a lot of money for a program that "might" work, the only thing I can think of right now is to try something like Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image (or any of the other disk "cloning" software out there). You'll need to "clone" the drive, not simply back it up. Cloning runs from DOS from which you "may" be able to recover the files. Simply backing up the drive with one of these programs may not work since the backup feature runs from Windows and Windows apparently can't read your drive. This, of course, is no guarantee either. If you just happen to live near Cincinnati Ohio (I know, it's a long shot), I have the software that could most likely recover the files, but it's not something I can give out.

I'll have to think if there is another way or if there is some freeware that can do it. My head isn't too clear at the moment, as I'm taking pain meds for a tooth I just had pulled. Also, it's best to disconnect the drive from the computer and NOT use it until you have a plan. The more you use it, the less your chances are of recovering data.

Now that I think of it, it may just be your FAT or NTFS table that is corrupt. What exactly is the message that Maxtor gave you?

Now that I think of it, it may just be your FAT or NTFS table that is corrupt. What exactly is the message that Maxtor gave you?

well when i do the diagnostic test from dos it comes up saying problem w/ drive do you want to fix, i select yes, then it comes back saying problem fixed. if i run the test again it does the exact same thing. so I ran the more thorough scan and thats when it came back saying "this drive is failing, back up all software blah blah blah". Also i downloaded a program that runs from windows that supposedly can save files on a damaged drive.... it sees the drive but it gives me errors and says drive not readable, something about bad sectors...i'm at work now so i dont remember exactly. I even tried to format the drive from dos and it wouldnt do it.....

also the drive isnt really that old, maybe 6-12 months..... It's a slave drive. My main drive is a SATA drive that came w/ my pc, and then I added a connector card which I have 2 IDE slave drives running off of. I don't think it's the connector card because the other slave is working fine. I've been told that SATA and IDE drives don't play well together, is this true?

I know very little about SATA right now, but it seems to me that if it was working at one time (your "bad" drive), the reason it's not working now probably isn't due to a conflict with the SATA.

Does your motherboard have IDE connectors on it? If so, and if it's possible, disconnect the SATA and put in a master IDE with Windows on it and then connect the "bad" drive to the motherboard as a slave. This will eliminate the IDE card as being the problem. See if you can see the files on the slave. If not, I'd say your FAT or NTFS is bad.

Just because the drive is only 6-12 months old, doesn't mean it isn't going bad, but it is very unlikely.

I'm not sure exactly which diagnostic he's refering to, but check out the PowerMax CD that should have come with your hard drive. If you don't have it, you can download it for free from Maxtor's website.
Just enter the details about your specific hard drive model and it'll give you the correct version.

Another thing you could try is a S.M.A.R.T. drive monitoring program. There is a free one available HERE.
I haven't tried this one, but I'm confident it's good. Most things that come from Sourceforge are. Keep in mind that for any S.M.A.R.T. monitoring program to be accurate, you should keep this program running in the background as long as your computer is on. Also, your hard drive has to use the S.M.A.R.T. technology. These monitoring programs will not work with the older drives that do not use S.M.A.R.T.